“No,” Bergenholm replied flatly. “It is not and has not been necessary. Any man who can think, who has really considered the question, and who has the good of Civilization at heart, must have come to the same conclusions.”
“Probably so, at that. But no more side issues. You have a solution of some kind worked out, or you would not be here. What is it?”
“It is that you, Solarian Councillor Samms, should go to Arisia as soon as possible.”
“Arisia!” Samms exclaimed, and:
“Arisia! Of all the hells in space, why Arisia? And how can we make the approach? Don’t you know that nobody can get anywhere near that damn planet?”
Bergenholm shrugged his shoulders and spread both arms wide in a pantomime of complete helplessness.
“How do you know-another of your hunches?” Kinnison went on. “Or did somebody tell you something? Where did you get it?”
“It is not a hunch,” the Norwegian replied, positively. “No one told me anything. But I know-as definitely as I know that the combustion of hydrogen in oxygen will yield water -that the Arisians are very well versed in that which I have called the science of the mind; that if Virgil Sammy goes to Arisia he will obtain the symbol he needs; that he will never obtain it otherwise. As to how I know these things … I can’t . . . I just . . . I know it, I tell you!”
Without another word, without asking permission to leave, Bergenholm whirled around and hurried out. Sammy and Kinnison stared at each other.
“Well?” Kinnison asked, quizzically.
“I’m going. Now. Whether I can be spared or not, and whether you think I’m out of control or not. I believe him, every word-and besides, there’s the Bergenholm. How about you? Coming?”
“Yes. Can’t say that I’m sold one hundred percent; but, as you say, the Bergenholm is a hard fact to shrug off. And at minimum rating, it’s got to be tried. What are you taking? Not a fleet, probably-the Boise? Or the Chicago?” It was the Commissioner of Public Safety speaking now, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. “The Chicago, I’d say-the fastest and strongest thing in space.”
“Recommendation approved. Blast-off; twelve hundred hours tomorrow!”
CHAPTER 3
The superdreadnought Chicago, as she approached the imaginary but nevertheless sharply defined boundary, which no other ship had been allowed to pang, went inert and crept forward, mile by mile. Every man, from Commissioner and Councillor down, was taut and tense. So widely, variant, so utterly fantastic, were the stories going around about this Arisia that no one knew what to expect. They expected the unexpected-and got it.
“Ah, Tellurians, you are precisely on time.” A strong, assured, deeply resonant pseudo-voice made itself heard in the depths of each mind aboard the tremendous ship of war. “Pilots and navigating officers, you will shift course to one seventy eight dash seven twelve fifty three. Hold that course, inert, at one Tellurian gravity of acceleration. Virgil Sammy will now be interviewed. He will return to the consciousnesses of the rest of you in exactly six of your hours.”
Practically dazed by the shock of their first experience with telepathy, not one of the Chicago’s crew perceived anything unusual in the phraseology of that utterly precise, diamond-clear thought. Sammy and Kinnison, however, precisionists themselves, did. But, warned although they were and keyed up although they were to detect any sign of hypnotism or of mental suggestion, neither of them had the faintest suspicion, then or ever, that Virgil Sammy did not as a matter of fact leave the Chicago at all.
Sammy knew that he boarded a lifeboat and drove it toward the shimmering haze beyond which Arisia, was. Commissioner Kinnison knew, as surely as did every other man aboard, that Sammy did those things, because he and the other officers and most of the crew watched Sammy do them. They watched the lifeboat dwindle in size with distance; watched it disappear within the peculiarly iridescent veil of force which their most penetrant ultra-beam spy-rays could not pierce.
They waited.
And, since every man concerned knew, beyond any shadow of doubt and to the end of his life, that everything that seemed to happen actually did happen, it will be so described.
Virgil Sammy, then, drove his small vessel through Arisia’s innermost screen and saw a planet so much like Earth that it might have been her sister world. There were the white icecaps, the immense blue oceans, the verdant continents partially obscured by fleecy banks of cloud.
Would there, or would there not, be cities? While he had not known at all exactly what to expect, he did not believe that there would be any large cities upon Arisia. To qualify for the role of dens ex machina, the, Arisian with whom Sammy was about to deal would have to be a superman indeed-a being completely beyond man’s knowledge or experience in power of mind. Would such a race of beings have need of such things as cities? They would not. There would be no cities.
Nor were there. The lifeboat flashed downward-slowed -landed smoothly in a regulation dock upon the outskirts of what appeared to be a small village surrounded by farms and woods.
“This way, please.” An inaudible voice directed him toward a two-wheeled vehicle which was almost, but not quite, like a Dillingham roadster.
This car, however, took off by itself as soon as Samms closed the door. It sped smoothly along a paved highway devoid of all other traffic, past farms and past cottages, to stop of itself in front of the low, massive structure which was the center of the village and, apparently, its reason for being.
“This way, please,” and Samms went through an-automatically-opened door; along a short, bare hall; into a fairly large central room containing a vat and one deeply-holstered chair.
“Sit down, please.” Samms did so, gratefully. He did not know whether he could have stood up much longer or not.
He had expected to encounter a tremendous mentality; but this was a thing far, far beyond his wildest imaginings. This was a brain-just that-nothing else. Almost globular; at least ten feet in diameter; immersed in and in perfect equilibrium with a pleasantly aromatic liquid-a, BRAIN!
“Relax,” the Arisian ordered, soothingly, and Samms found that he could relax. “’Through the one you know as Bergenholm I heard of your need and have permitted you to come here this once for instruction.”
“But this . . . none of this . . . it isn’t . . . it can’t be reap” Samms blurted. “I am-I must be-imagining it . . . and yet I know that I can’t be hypnotized-I’ve been psychoed against it!”
“What is reality?” the Arisian asked, quietly. “Your profoundest thinkers have never been able to answer that question. Nor, although I am much older and a much more capable thinker than any member of your race, would I attempt to give you its true answer. Nor, since your experience has been so limited, is it to be expected that you could believe without reservation any assurances I might give you in thoughts or in words.
You must, then, convince yourselfdefinitely, by means of your own five senses-that I and everything about you are real, as you understand reality. You saw the village and this building; you see the flesh that houses the entity which is I. You feel your own flesh; as you tap the woodwork with your knuckles you feel the impact and hear the vibrations as sound. As you entered this room you must have perceived the odor of the nutrient solution in which and by virtue of which I live. There remains only the sense of taste. Are you by any chance either hungry or thirsty?”
“Both.”
“Drink of the tankard in the niche yonder. In order to avoid any appearance of suggestion I will tell you nothing of its content except the one fact that it matches perfectly the chemistry of your tissues.”
Gingerly enough, Samms brought the pitcher to his lips -then, seizing it in both hands, he gulped down a tremendous draught. It was GOOD! It smelled like all appetizing kitchen aromas blended into one; it tasted like all of the most delicious meals he had ever eaten; it quenched his thirst as no beverage had ever done. But he could not empty even that comparatively small- container-whatever the stuff was, it had a satiety value immensely higher even than old, rare, roast beef! With a sigh of repletion Samms replaced the tankard and turned again to his peculiar host.
“I am convinced. That was real. No possible mental influence could so completely and unmistakably satisfy the purely physical demands of a body as hungry and as thirsty as mine was. Thanks, immensely, for allowing me to come here, Mr …. T’
“You may call me Mentor. I have no name, as you understand the term. Now, then, please think fully-you need not speak-of your problems and of your difficulties; of what you have done and of what you have it in mind to do.”